Marty Stuart Show Still Honors Traditional Country Music

This appeared on Cybergrass.com - October 11, 2010

Grammy-winner and American music icon Marty Stuart is yet again helping preserve traditional country music with a new season of his highly rated TV show, The Marty Stuart Show, set to begin taping its third season in November. Stuart handpicks the esteemed list of guests that has included Earl Scruggs, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Dierks Bentley, Emmylou Harris, Vince Gill, Old Crow Medicine Show and many more over the past two seasons. The show received a 2010 Telly Award, recognized as an outstanding cable TV program.

"I grew up watching shows like the Porter Wagoner Show on TV, and I want to be able to provide people in America with a place to find that type of program again," explains Stuart. "We try and highlight the best of what's happening in the way of traditional country music. We get to work with old friends and some real music legends and also help introduce our audience to some new singers in the new wave coming up now....and it sure is fun!"

The Marty Stuart Show is a must-see show during as RFD-TVs Saturday Night Music Row. Each exciting episode features Mr. Stuart, his band His Fabulous Superlatives and his Country Queen wife, Ms. Connie Smith, who together have made the show a celebrated success. The Marty Stuart Show regularly features guest appearances from some of country musics most revered superstars. Radio personality Mr. Eddie Stubbs shares the stage as both Mr. Stuarts sidekick and the shows announcer.

In addition to being one of country musics most historically-minded new traditionalists, Marty Stuart is also one of the most eclectic performers, seamlessly transitioning between honky-tonk, rockabilly, traditional country, and bluegrass. Mr. Stuart is an accomplished artist, performer, producer, writer and photographer. His career began at the tender age of 12 when he began playing mandolin with the Sullivan Family. He then moved to Nashville to join Lester Flatt & the Nashville Grass and eventually landed the job he had always wanted- performing with the Johnny Cash band. After more than 6 years with Johnny Cash, Stuart pulled together his own band, launched his own label and the rest is history.

"What inspires me now, is traditional country music," says Stuart. "It's the music I most cherish, the culture in which I was raised. It's the bedrock upon which the empire of country music is built, the empowering force that provides this genre with lasting credibility. It's beyond trends and it's timeless. With all that being said, I found traditional country music to be on the verge of extinction. It's too precious to let slip away. I wanted to attempt to write a new chapter."

That new chapter is Ghost Train (The Studio B Sessions) which includes such unmitigated country staples as the male-female duet (the gorgeous, heartfelt "I Run to You," written and sung with Connie Smith), the chugging, bluesyand spooky fellow Mississippian Jimmie Rodgers-like train song "Ghost Train Four-Oh-Ten," steel guitar driven, hardcore heartbreak ballads such as "A World Without You," and "Drifting Apart," and a no-flinching directness is front and center in the premiere of "Hangman," a pointed, harrowing tale of an executioner's job and life that Stuart co-wrote with Johnny Cash just four days before the Man in Black passed away.

As the album title denotes, Ghost Train (The Studio B Sessions) was recorded in the legendary RCA Studio B in Nashville, where Stuart participated in his first-ever recording session at the age of 13 playing mandolin in Lester Flatt's band.

"Studio B has a profound pedigree; it's where so much of American music's legacy was forged, certainly country music's," says Stuart. "And sonically, this is a room that welcomes music. It seemed to me that in order to authentically stage a brand new traditional country music record we should bring it back to the scene of the crime."

Stuart's latest album, Ghost Train (The Studio B Sessions), represents another ode to country music's legacy and is receiving glowing reviews from critics...

"The longer you ride in Marty Stuart's Ghost Train, the more its speed and energy hits you like the wind in your face." - Fresh Air/NPR

"Ghost Train is near-perfect country." - New York Post

"Ghost Train offers further proof that the 51-year-old Stuart is really just now in his prime." - Philadelphia Inquirer

"Country doesn't get any better than this." - Lincoln Star Journal

"An indelible link between traditional and modern country music." - Milwaukee Journal Sentinel